Asian Mission Report

I’ve just gotten back home after a two week trip to the US. The Angleton church arranged a gathering called “Mission Possible,” which took place in Angleton last week. It was one of the best events I have attended in a very long time.

I was very touched by the generosity and enthusiasm of the congregation. It seems everyone got in on the planning and execution of the event. They brought all of the missionaries they help support to spend the week in Angleton together, reporting on our work and receiving huge amounts of affection and encouragement from the brethren there. One of the missionaries, working in Cuba, was not able to get a visa to the US, and was unable to be with us. But he sent his report back via video, and we were able to hear about his work. It was so encouraging to see the breadth of work that is being done by Angleton through the various missionaries they support. Angleton is neither the largest nor wealthiest church I have ever seen, but they are so faithful in using the gifts God has given them to reach out to the area where they are, and to send missionaries to other areas to join in the same ministry. This congregation is a shining example to the brotherhood of faithful service in the spread of the gospel.

On Sunday, the program began with a morning worship service together. There was an introduction of the missionaries, but more importantly, an exhortation pointing us to the mission God has set before all Christians. I don’t have adequate words to express just how encouraging the service was. It was nicely planned, very well thought out, and did an excellent job putting the work supported by Angleton into the larger perspective of God’s work in reconciling the world to himself.

After the service, a wonderful BBQ lunch was catered for all of us, followed by reports of the work being done by the missionaries supported by Angleton. I enjoyed hearing about the Spanish work, about the work being done in downtown Houston, and about the work being done in St. Thomas. (If you’d like to see more about the work in St. Thomas, reports will start appearing here soon.)

The program for the week continued with nightly gatherings where each of the missionaries preached. On Wednesday morning, we had a ladies’ class together, which I helped facilitate. There were about 60 in attendance, with people driving over from League City, Sweeney, Lake Jackson, Alvin, and West Columbia. It was a wonderful morning, with great encouragement and discussion, and of course an excellent lunch!

It was a great “bonus” to me to be reunited with Thaddeus and Elaine after not having seen them for about 15 years. They were instrumental in my earliest missions experiences, and provided much inspiration for me in helping to generate the desire to do mission work from the time I was a teenager. The warm fellowship we share together in Angleton last week was a great reminder to me of the great breadth of the work God is doing through his church. The last time I had met Thaddeus before I moved to Asia, he had told me, “We will still be working together, just in different fields.” Seeing him and Elaine faithfully serving, as always, and being together once again to enjoy that deep bond we share in the Lord — well, it was just good.

Likewise, I enjoyed finally meeting Les and Yvonne and Armando and his family. I’ve heard so much about these families that Angleton supports, and it was good to see them face to face and to hear about the work they are doing from their own reports. I will look forward to more reunions with them over the years too.

And of course, it is always a pleasure to see those brethren in Angleton who have been here participating in our campaigns. The great support they have been to us here in Woodlands is immeasurable, and I pray that God will heap blessings on them. Whatever thanks I can give is certainly inadequate for the work they have done. Happily, our God is well able to heap rewards on them beyond measure.

The warm smiles and hugs of the congregation in Angleton, the generous hospitality, and the gracious words of encouragement were revitalizing to me. I will keep the week of “Mission Possible” with me for a long time. It is a wonderful feeling, sharing in the work with these brethren.

As I mentioned in last week’s update, I’ll be heading back to the US this week for a missions workshop in Angleton. This workshop, called “Mission Possible,” has been planned for the past year and a half or more, and I am really looking forward to it. I will get to see some friends, working in other fields, that I have not seen in many years. It will be a real joy to catch up with them.

As it turns out, there’s been some turmoil going on in my family over the past couple of weeks. Since such things are never scheduled to our liking (or else they’d never happen!), I count it as God’s providence that it works out that I am already planning to be home for about 10 days before the workshop in Angleton. I do ask that you will keep my family members in your prayers.

It was really nice, in our worship assembly this morning, to see one of the new members reading the closing Scripture. He did a nice job reading, and he read in Mandarin, which helps include our non-English-speaking members in the service. It is always good to see members moving into new areas of service, and I am especially pleased for this brother.

Our Bible classes seem to be going especially well right now too. We restructured the roles various teachers are playing in the classes, rotating the jobs to try to make the best use of our resources. It seems that it has been refreshing. Both the youth and adult class seem to be rejuvenated by it, and it is good to see. The adults are studying 1 Corinthians now (chapter 11 today), and the discussion has been very encouraging. We had a good lesson this morning about the importance of the Lord’s Supper, with some particular focus on the context of chapter 11 — its focus on the unity of the body of Christ, and the reminder that gives us each week when we partake of that communion together to think of our brothers and sisters, even as we examine our own hearts.

Last night we had our Midautumn Festival celebration together. When we first planted the congregation in Woodlands, several of our ladies organized an outing to celebrate the festival together, and it was great fun for all of the members and the many visitors who attended. Ever since then, it has been one of our favorite activites each year. We had a great time again last night, with several visitors in attendance. The children loved carrying their lanterns and playing together in the yard at the church building. We adults enjoyed a good meal, lots of hot tea to go with the mooncakes, and equally warm fellowship.

We are making plans for the second part of our campaign for 2006. For the past several years, we’ve made our campaign an alternate-year event, in order to allow us time to do effective follow up. The last campaign (2004), we tried something a little different, and found it a very good arrangement. We usually hold our campaign during the June school holidays, when a group comes to help us with the work. Then, during the November/December school holidays we have a follow up to the campaign, with a family from League City coming to be a part of that follow up work. In 2004, my brother-in-law, sister, and their kids came to do that follow up, and they will be here again with us from Nov 17 - Dec 12. We are very excited about their presence here, and have made lots of plans for the time that they will be with us. We ask that you will keep this second half of our campaign in your prayers.

I also ask that you will remember to pray for safe travels for me during this week. Your thoughts, prayers, and encouragement are an endless source of strength for me, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it.

On my other blog (which is where I tend to wear my literature teacher hat), I post a list each month of what I’ve been reading. I’ll post that here as well — I’d like to hear any book recommendations you might have too, if you decide to leave a comment. Much of my September reading was for class, but I got some reading for fun in there too.

Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

I’m not quite finished with this one yet. I am listening to the audio version while I drive (or when I was flying) instead of reading the bound copy. The narrator has a very heavy regional accent, and at first it was rather irritating to me. It turns out, though, that it has sort of added to the enjoyment. The narrator’s voice seems to me to emphasize the irony in the text, and when the story reached certain “twists,” they really came out of the blue for me. I was thinking about it, and it occurred to me that if I had been reading instead of listening, I think I might not have been as shocked. My reading voice in my head would’ve handled the book quite differently all along than this narrator has, and it would’ve left me with a very different reading experience. That alone has made it interesting for me.

New American Writing poetry anthology

I haven’t been enjoying this anthology as much as I enjoy the other literary periodicals I read, but I like to try to keep up with what is going on, so…. It mostly has very experimental work. As with all experiments, I suppose, I find some of it more successful than others. I am very interested, though, in the segment of poems toward the end by Chinese poets, writing in English. I haven’t quite gotten to the end of it yet, but it looks very interesting.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil

I reread this book — it has been some time since I last read it. I enjoyed it a lot, and especially because I had a time to engage it at a leisurely pace. I think when I read it before, it was for some undergraduate course (that’s 15 years ago now!!!). I really enjoyed just taking it slowly and thinking through the various points raised. It’s a fun, but challenging, read.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

This is a book probably best categorized as juvenile fiction. It is a fun read. I really loved the word play. And it just got more and more involved as the book went on. It isn’t strictly fun and games though. There is a lot of good thought going on there too.

Books and Culture

I was able to catch up on a couple of issues of this that I hadn’t read when they came. It’s ok that I was behind on that, I suppose, as the May/June issue is the last one that came to my home. I’m not sure what is up with the subscription, but I will probably have a large stack of several issues of Books and Culture all arrive at the same time. The May/June issue had several good articles.

All the rest of my reading was in preparation for lectures:

Shakespeare’s Henry V

I’m not usually as into the histories as I am the comedies or tragedies, but I did enjoy reading this one with the students. It is more accessible than some of the others, I think.

As You Like It

This is one of those plays that is fun every time you read it. I listened to a couple of audio performances as well, while preparing for the lecture, and can’t help but enjoy it each time. Rosalind is a real riot.

The Rover by Aphra Behn

This play was covered in the lecture with As You Like It, considering the genre of comedy, canonicity, and gender issues. I like the play, and am a great admirer of Behn (the first English woman to earn her living by writing). It is a very dark humour, and often a disturbing play, but I do enjoy it. I especially enjoyed the VCD provided by my school of a performance of this play, produced by the Open University in the UK. Andy Serkis played Willmore (though not in overly Gollum-like fashion), and really made the show. Besides this, I enjoyed the way the issue of race was foregrounded. It led to a more complex treatment of the issue than what we might see on the page. But the space is there for it, and it worked very nicely.

Shakespeare’s Othello

This will be the topic of my next lecture. It’s a fun one too. But then, I always like the tragedies.

And of course, I finally finished The Historian, which I’ve been reading since May. I enjoyed the novel, but did find the end a little too “typical.” But it was, to me, worth the read. Another friend is reading it now, and he said he finds it very scary, but is enjoying it nonetheless.